Understanding failure can lead to more massage money.
I bet you think I’m talking about lessons learned from failing. I’m not. I’m talking about something more nuanced. Here’s what I mean.
You’ve failed at something. I’ve failed. We’ve all failed.
After the failure our brains add the current failure onto a list of failures. Nice brain… As the list grows, we start to think: Nope, not even going to try.
But here’s the thing, when you “failed”, did you actually fail—try something and not succeed?
Or did you just not show up?
There’s a difference.
Why You Didn’t Fail
Think back to a “failure”.
Oh-oh, me first!
Once I had a side gig as a new business consultant for a fitness management company. My job was to get this fitness management company in the bid process for managing corporate fitness centers.
I was pretty good at getting us in the bid process via reaching companies over the Internet. But when it came to developing local business relationships face-to-face, I didn’t deliver. In fact, I spent a year avoiding any of those face-to-face interactions because I hated schmoozing.
Eventually, it was “Adios, Marcos.”
I was replaced by someone who would do the face-to-face interactions.
Added to my list of failures was new business consultant. But in retrospect, it can’t be any more obvious that it wasn’t a true failure because I literally hadn’t shown up to do half of my job.
Showing Up = Chance for Success
Recently, Kat, a client of mine, reminded me of what can be accomplished if you show up.
Kat is currently ranked 12th in the nation in singles tennis in her age group. When I asked her about the key to her success, she smiled and said that are plenty of people better than her, they just don’t show up.
If you don’t show up, you have no chance of succeeding. Period.
2 Showing Up Keys
For me, showing up involves two key things:
- Recognition.
You first have to recognize when you’re hiding. Then you need to start
- Self-negotiations.
By self-negotiations I mean that you make the “showing up” less painful for yourself by giving yourself outs.
For example, when my wife, Lisa, and I were doing an on-site massage business, I wanted to connect with local hotels, and there was a hotel association in our area that had a social every month.
Yay…more schmoozing…
But if I wanted to get to know the people in the industry, I had to schmooze, right?
The socials happened at night when I was busy doing massage. This made it convenient for me not to go. And I did that for awhile until I recognized that I was hiding.
Then I started to negotiate with myself: “I know you just got done work, but there’s an hour left to go at the social. Just go for 30 minutes.”
So I went to my first social and when I got there, things were worse than I thought they’d be. The handful of people I knew weren’t there.
I looked at my phone: 28 minutes and 22 seconds to go.
“Okay, if you introduce yourself to 3 people, you can leave anytime you want.”
I did and with 7 minutes and 13 seconds left, out the door I went!
When the next monthly social rolled around, I had zero interest in going back.
“Okay, Mark, just go to this one and you won’t have to go to amother one.”
I pinky-locked on that one fast.
This next social turned out to be easier, and when the third one rolled around, I went willingly, but I gave myself an out: If for whatever reason I want to stop going, I can.
You can see where this is going. Though I never loved the socials, they got easier, and I never used my out.
How to Make More Massage Money By Showing Up
Here’s another way showing up has helped me make more massage money.
By showing up to the marketing table (consistently working one marketing strategy) for a year, I nearly doubled my weekly income.
Did I want to show up?
Hells no.
I had to negotiate with myself like crazy.
“If you don’t get a referral after 3 months, you can stop.”
How You Can Make More Massage Money: Show Up
If you’re a little in the dumps because you think you’ve failed at marketing or starting a side business or taking your business to the next level or asking for a raise, think again. My guess is that your “failure” might be directly related to NOT showing up.
Give yourself a chance.
Recognize when you’re avoiding “showing up” and then try self-negotiations to stay on track.
Let me know what I can do to help you.
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